The Man Without a Country and Other Tales eBook

January 24 and January 31, 1863. The moral which
it tries to illustrate, which is, I believe, an important
one, was thus commended to the attention of the very
large circle of the readers of that journal,—­a
journal to which I am eager to say I think this nation
has been very largely indebted for the loyalty, the
good sense, and the high tone which seem always to
characterize it. During the war, the pictorial
journals had immense influence in the army, and they
used this influence with an undeviating regard to
the true honor of the country.]

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CHAPTER I.

THE PORK-BARREL.

“Felix,” said my wife to me, as I came
home to-night, “you will have to go to the pork-barrel.”

“Are you quite sure,” said I,—­“quite
sure? ‘Woe to him,’ says the oracle,
‘who goes to the pork-barrel before the moment
of his need.’”

“And woe to him, say I,” replied my brave
wife,—­“woe and disaster to him; but
the moment of our need has come. The figures are
here, and you shall see. I have it all in black
and in white.”

And so it proved, indeed, that when Miss Sampson,
the nurse, was paid for her month’s service,
and when the boys had their winter boots, and when
my life-insurance assessment was provided for, and
the new payment for the insurance on the house,—­when
the taxes were settled with the collector (and my
wife had to lay aside double for the war),—­when
the pew-rent was paid for the year, and the water-rate—­we
must have to start with, on the 1st of January, one
hundred dollars. This, as we live, would pay,
in cash, the butcher, and the grocer, and the baker,
and all the dealers in things that perish, and would
buy the omnibus tickets, and recompense Bridget till
the 1st of April. And at my house, if we can
see forward three months we are satisfied. But,
at my house, we are never satisfied if there is a
credit at any store for us. We are sworn to pay
as we go. We owe no man anything.

So it was that my wife said: “Felix, you
will have to go to the pork-barrel.”

This is the story of the pork-barrel.

It happened once, in a little parish in the Green
Mountains, that the deacon reported to Parson Plunkett,
that, as he rode to meeting by Chung-a-baug Pond,
he saw Michael Stowers fishing for pickerel through
a hole in the ice on the Sabbath day. The parson
made note of the complaint, and that afternoon drove
over to the pond in his “one-horse shay.”
He made his visit, not unacceptable, on the poor Stowers
household, and then crossed lots to the place where
he saw poor Michael hoeing. He told Michael that
he was charged with Sabbath breaking, and bade him
plead to the charge. And poor Mike, like a man,
plead guilty; but, in extenuation, he said that there
was nothing to eat in the house, and rather than see
wife and children faint, he had cut a hole in the
ice, had put in his hook again and again, and yet again,
and coming home had delighted the waiting family with
an unexpected breakfast. The good parson made
no rebuke, nodded pensive, and drove straightway to
the deacon’s door.